Zee Links and Minifeatures: July 2007 Archives

Calif. plan could sway 2008 race



I like it, and not just as someone who tends to vote more for the elephants. I think it would be equally good in right leaning Texas, the second largest number of electoral votes.



Because California hasn't voted Republican since 1984 (When Reagan, who was a former governor, won 49 states), we're basically ignored in the national elections. With the preponderance of people who'd pull the lever for the Democratic candidate even if they ran Pol Pot against Mohandas Gandhi on the Republican side, California as a whole is just not in play. Typically, the networks are calling California for the Donkeys within seconds of the polls closing, making it a waste for Republicans to campaign here and pointless for the Democrats, so neither party pays any attention to the state with the most voters. This would change that, and make it worthwhile and necessary for candidates to campaign here - and it might just cause them to modify their platform a bit, to try and win the toss-up districts. 20 electoral votes is over 7 percent of the number needed to win.



In short, this appears to be in the interests of the people of California, never mind one party or the other.

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First the bridge to nowhere. Now the FBI has searched Senator Stevens' home for evidence of corruption. Amazingly, it took them until the sixth paragraph to mention that he's Republican.



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Victor Davis Hanson has some perspective we should remember.



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Wizbang on how not to fix health care



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Captain's Quarters on the Washington Post's measurement of which party is really more partisan? (in the 110th congress)



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Volokh Conspiracy on short-sightedness in the confirmation of judges.



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"Spacial Profiling" over at Scrappleface. As a Space Cadet myself, I resent this and demand that law enforcement everywhere put an end to this vile practice!



And yes, I'm kidding, albeit not with Mr. Ott's brilliance.



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In case you didn't know: 'Cool' Icon Che Guevara Was a Murderous Thug

I've been having a severe and ongoing problem with spammers "spoofing" my domains - sending out emails with false headers that suggest I sent it out. This morning, the catch all account was literally full of "returned" emails. I can't think of any way to stop someone from counterfeiting your domain in a "from" address (as it doesn't come from or go through anywhere I actually control or even have influence), but if someone knows of such a method, it would be welcome knowledge.



I suspect this may be a part of the reason my search engine hits are down. Wonder if anyone has ever sued a spam meister or their ISP for the tort of having caused search engine rankings to decrease? It's obviously something of economic value.

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Let the Blame Begin



I don't have much sympathy for Wall Street investment houses that failed to do as much due diligence as the average individual investor. It's an inflexible rule that while derivatives can make more money, they can also lose more. This calls for increased due diligence, not reduced.



Before you volunteer to hold the bag, as these folks did, make certain there's something there worth holding it for.



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Scientific evidence for monster fish tales. Now every frustrated fisherman will have evidence to back up their claim about the one that got away



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Clinton campaign insulted by cleavage article



Is it just me, or does this read like Hillary is using her cleavage for cash?



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Romney Says no to You Tube debate



And there was much rejoicing.



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Lose so that we can win!, over at Classical Values



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A couple of spoof trailers, for Mary Poppins and The Shining, respectively.

Study: Renewable Energy Not Green

Building enough wind farms, damming adequate number of rivers and growing sufficient biomass to produce ample kilowatts to make a difference in meeting global energy demands would involve a huge invasion of nature, according to Jesse Ausubel, a researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Disputed, of course. I'm amazed there was a grant given in the first place, how politically untouchable this subject is.



However, let's get real. The land, materials and other resources for renewable energy do not come out of some hysperspatial vortex.



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Oscar the cat predicts patients' deaths



Is he merely making a prediction, or the actual cause?



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Hidden City Found Beneath Alexandria



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In Venezuela, Speak No Ill of Hugo



Is there anybody here who still thinks he's some kind of champion of the poor, as opposed to a false-populist demogogue? I feel absolutely safe in predicting he'll preside over mass murder at some point before he leaves power. The only thing that'll stop it is if his death happens first.



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"It was only a matter of time" department: FTC exploited in phishing scam. Looks like trojan horses, too.

Lois Greisman, associate director of the FTC's division of marketing practices, said, "We are the agency that brought you the Do Not Call Registry and CAN-SPAM," she said, referring to a 2003 law restricting commercial spam. "We're not likely to send out unsolicited e-mails."

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Democrats request perjury probe of Gonzales



It was political grandstanding on both parts. But it appears as if Gonzales may have committed perjury, under circumstances similar to Bill Clinton.



I wonder how many Donkeys who voted to acquit Clinton will vote to convict Gonzales? And how many Elephants who voted to convict Clinton will vote to acquit Gonzales?



A pox upon both their houses.



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Unacceptable in any circumstances: Judge: FBI helped frame 4 men for murder



I'd be in favor of repealing statutes of limitations on law enforcement malfeasance. It's time to hold these clowns responsible, and rarely does the evidence come to light quickly, or even within a few years.



Law enforcement is given special powers possessed by no other citizens. When abused, the damage to our society is magnified, and the penalties should be more harsh.

I went home last night intending to schedule a post for this morning. Only my home internet was down. I tried piggybacking on the public library's wireless with my laptop, and they were down as well. It was still down this morning. So that's why there wasn't a post this morning at the usual time. There will be one tomorrow.



Next week, my wife is going to be out of town at a conference, which means I'm on my own with a seven year old and a not quite three year old. The younger's day care is close to my wife's office, over fifteen miles out of my way on freeways heavily impacted at rush hour. It's going to take over two hours out of my day just to drop her off and pick her up - never mind trying to run errands with two children, one of which is in the middle of terrible twos. New articles are likely to be non-existent until I recover from that.

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Sometimes, the little things mean a lot. One of the sharper escrow providers I've worked with sent me an email this morning after we closed a deal on Monday

You are a very good agent who takes care of your clients as if they were family.

Okay, so I'd rather have a referral from a client. It's still a good thing when a fellow professional who's earned my respect notices and takes a few seconds to tell me.



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House Democrats Pass Contempt Citations



Is there anyone who doesn't believe that the whole thing was partisan political point scoring right from the very beginning?



A pox upon both their houses. Again or still.



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Captain's Quarters about the BBC and the con game it hopes to use to convince people they're not dishonest.

Carnival of Personal Finance

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Afghanistan's last king laid to rest



I wouldn't return the the days of kings and nobility. But there is something to be said for having a part of your power structure who will be there thirty years from now, and so they're not always focused on how to get enough people to vote them back into power in the next election. Too bad you can't give someone power only to do good. If they've got it, they've got it. Any restraints on applying it can and will be used to prevent them from doing good.



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Same old FAA: Air traffic operators fault maintenance



If I flew on any kind of regular basis, I'd be more upset.



Air traffic creates and provides so much economic value that the money to fix the system doesn't amount to passing gas in a tornado. Unfortunately, until they fix FAA management and get rational about the economics involved, things are going to get worse.



Now that I don't work for them any more, watching the air traffic debacle in progress has the same fascination as a train wreck in progress, and about the same amusement value. I'll probably pay for it karmically, but I feel like I'm sitting up on a hill watching it all happen from a safe distance. Anybody want some popcorn?

Obama: Don't stay in Iraq over genocide

SUNAPEE, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

I disagree. Nonetheless I'm glad he's got the intestinal fortitude to make his case - to acknowledge the opposing arguments and try to win the argument not by kneejerking against the other side, but by trying to build the case that his argument is stronger.



If he's elected President, the voters will have decided he's correct. So he'll be on track to get the requirement for a genocide out of the way early in his term. Carter and Cambodia. Clinton and Rwanda. Can't have a Democrat elected president without a genocide. They have a tradition to uphold!



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Swedish woman gets superfast Internet 40 Gigabits - Uff da!



Of course, the bottleneck is far more commonly the ability of the servers to access it and send it to you. Nonetheless, I'm sure there are spam-meisters whose eyes lit up reading that. At 1k per message, they could theoretically send 40 million pieces of spam per second. And you thought your inboxes were full of spam already...



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This is just too good: Tiny brain no obstacle to French civil servant



What can you add to a story like that?



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Restored Saturn V rocket unveiled



Does anyone care about a rocket in a museum? I'm interested in the ones that actually go into space.



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I'm probably going to stay up tonight long enough to walk over to the neighborhood supermarket and buy a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They're open 24 hours, and I haven't seen a better price advertised. Since it's less than 100 meters, I don't have to pay for gas or shipping. Cheap, quick, and effective. Then I'm planning to do something my wife doesn't expect - let her read it first. Unless she reads the site today, of course, but one of the few downsides of her employer is that they block internet access.

Carnival of Real Estate



The San Diego Special Edition

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Victor Davis Hanson surgically eviscerates the New York Times' editorial.



Captain's Quarters with John McCain's elegant refutation of Mr. Reid.



If he hadn't been trying to repeal the first amendment for the last fifteen years, I'd vote for John McCain for President solely based upon his solid understanding of the circumstances our country and our civilization find ourselves in.

Carnival of Personal Finance

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Some good analysis of the North Korean situation over at Willisms



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Victor Davis Hanson on Lepanto.

Oops! Via Josh Poulson, I got pointed to an article at Intellectual Conservative.



We must consider that the threats to the Spotted Owl ten years ago are not necessarily the same as the threats now. Nonetheless, at first glance it appears that we basically killed most of our domestic timber industry for something that wasn't their fault. This leaves completely aside the issue of whether it was the right thing to do even if the timber industry was the primary culprit, but if this is correct, that does not appear to be the case. Oops.



This oops didn't just hurt big business, by the way. It hurt a very large number of ordinary people. Think they'll forgive and forget if we give them a heartfelt apology? Somehow I doubt it.

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Double standards, version infinity: Where are the dead children this time?.

Popular Advice You Shouldn't Take



Four pieces of advice. I mostly agree with the writer's take on Amassing Cash and Buying Big. The time when most people take to amass an emergency fund is precisely the time of their lives when what they save now, correctly invested, will return the maximum return. At that stage of your life in particular, you should be living well beneath your means. Fund your 401k if you've got one, fund a Roth IRA, regular IRA and/or SEP, and then worry about your emergency fund. At that stage of your life, you should be earning and socking away well over 10% of your pay - 25% is a target to shoot for when you start your real career. If you get used to it right away, it becomes a lifelong habit. You get used to the fact that that money is going elsewhere, and you don't get used to spending it. I think regular readers will agree I've said quite a bit on the downfalls of buying too much house.



His advice on go for growth, which is basically don't, at least not right away, is situational. Things like not panicking in a downturn are part of what good financial advisers are for. You shouldn't overload on growth, but market downturns in every sector are a part of life. If you're not ready for it before you put your money on the table, something is wrong.



His advice on cash value life insurance, however, is just plain wrong. It's planning for a couple of decades rather than the rest of your life. It utterly fails to take into account that a twenty-year old has approximately six decades of remaining life expectancy, and today's twenty year old may have eight or even ten. It fails to take into account that someone who starts planning early and works at it is going to have one heck of a nest egg - and all of the better tools to do for indefinite tax deferral, as well as passing it on to the next generation, involve cash value life insurance - the older and more mature, the better. If there's an existing policy, you're not going to get rated for the fact that you just got diagnosed with cancer, or have been diagnosed with cancer, are now old and fat, or any of the reasons people get flat out turned down.



2-1-1. Not a bad batting average for a journalist. Completely unacceptable in a financial planner, but not bad for a journalist.

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House panel: Miers wrong to miss hearing

The White House showed no signs of backing down, pointing out that Bush was willing to make Miers and other administration officials available for interviews, but only behind closed doors and without a transcript. Democrats have rejected the offer.

This is political bickering, attempting to score PR points on both sides. A pox upon both their houses.



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This isn't the FAA I worked for. Report: Air controllers cover up errors Well, actually it is, depending upon who you knew and what groups you were a member of. A public error was the fastest ticket to management, if you were female, minority, or had a friend who was higher up. If not, well, the agency didn't have any reasons they needed to keep you, did they?



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Military Files Left Unprotected Online This isn't a political issue, or an administration issue. It's a procedural issue, and those who leave classified material available to unauthorized users should, at the very least, suffer the penalty of having all future access blocked. Which means no more classified work for those persons or companies.

Debunking some left-wing pravda over at Big Lizards

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Q and O on the benefits and drawbacks of the virtual filibuster in the US Senate.



I think the filibuster is a good thing to have, but to use it to thwart the desires of the majority should be an extraordinary act, and should be made sufficiently difficult and obvious as to render it political suicide for all but the most noble of reasons. In order to filibuster, you should be forced to stand there while the rest of the senate is in session and actually talk. Put the C-Span cameras on your ugly face and watch you stop the deliberations and the business of the senate on national TV. I'd wager that it would set the bar just about high enough to discourage the practice for all but the clearest and most sincere issues of morality. There's still a stench attached to those who filibustered the Civil Rights legislation back in the sixties, something that those involved richly deserved. Here's a scary thought: With the Senate rules in effect today, the civil rights filibusters would likely have succeeded. We wouldn't have the Voting Rights Act, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or for that matter the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which started it all.

Carnival of Personal Finance



Carnival of Real Estate



Consumer oriented Carnival of Real Estate

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Some people can't hear about a stupid stunt without wanting to try it themselves: 105 balloons put lawn chair pilot in air

One of the giants of the twentieth century would have been 100 today - July 7, 1907 Robert Heinlein was born.



You are missed, sir.

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Why do terrorists attack Britain time and again?



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Pope eases use of Latin Mass



I've never heard it and doubt I ever will, but I do want to comment on one small detail:

Criticism also came from Jewish leaders, unhappy with the restoration of a prayer for their conversion, said during Easter Week. The Anti-Defamation League called the move a "body blow to Catholic Jewish relations."

As opposed to the Muslim prayers in mosques worldwide for the slaughtering of Jews? Okay, this is something the Pope probably should have fixed*, but let's keep our sense of priorities here. How many religions don't want to convert those who don't follow them? Not many. So long as it's a prayer for the conversion of the "heathen" among those who have chosen to be there, I see no significant sin. "Those horrible awful Catholics are praying for people to convert!" Roll your eyes and move on.



*: he's the pope, and I'm not catholic or any other christian sect. Long as they don't start any religious persecutions, it's more than a little ridiculous for anyone outside of a religion to expect to have an effect upon the practice of that religion. They can sit in church and pray for their idea of god to put crosses on all the hilltops, for all I care. The idea behind not being catholic is that you think your thoughts are likely a truer picture, right? So I might start paying attention if suddenly one morning all the Jews did become Catholics in accordance with that prayer, but until that happens, I'm sort of doubtful, to say the least. This was used for centuries without any apparent effect upon the non-Catholics of the world.



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Iran sees "creeping coup" in the press: report



Better explanation?

Activists and Western diplomats say the authorities have become increasingly intolerant of dissent, turning the screws on pro-reform students, campaigners on women's issues and labor movement figures.

Happy Birthday to the greatest nation on earth! Some July 4th miscellany



The text that started it all



What signing cost the delegates



Disabled Iraq vets still trying to win one for the U.S.A.



(video) painting Liberty in three minutes



Road to independence was perilous, long



Freedom isn't Free



Calvin Coolidge upon the Declaration of Independence

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Clinton criticizes Libby prison commute

"This (the Libby decision) was clearly an effort to protect the White House. ... There isn't any doubt now, what we know is that Libby was carrying out the implicit or explicit wishes of the vice president, or maybe the president as well, in the further effort to stifle dissent."

Had that been the case, the president could have issued a pardon before it even went to trial.



Not that Ms. Quid-Pro-Pardon has any room whatsoever to criticize anyone else's use of the pardon. Mr. Bill issued 140 last minute pardons, and it seems likely to me that his wife participated in the political payback for several of them. (here's a list, that includes persons such as Mr. Symington, corrupt former governor of Arizona)



President Bush really has become Emmanuel Goldstein, hasn't he?



(Run it through a search engine if you've never read 1984)



The President commuted Libby's sentence so that he wouldn't go to jail for an investigation where no crime was committed beyond getting confused in testimony to the investigator.



Politically stupid, but the right thing to do for Mr. Libby. How many people would be ecstatically happy to be put in prison for two and a half years for getting confused in your testimony during an investigation where they knew no crime had been committed before they started talking to you?



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Chinese villagers eat dinosaur bones



Kind of makes you wonder if that's not what has been happening to a lot of fossils for a very long time.



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Red Mosque students surrender slowly



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Pulsing Giant Star Dissected

Red giants are older versions of the sun that, once they have burned off most of their hydrogen fuel, begin to burn helium. This creates intense "flashes" of radiation that puff the star up to more than 100 times its original size as it pushes stellar gas and dust out into space. S Orionis sheds about the mass of Earth each year.

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There isn't much the crooked Yemeni regime won't stoop to, as Armies of Liberation notes in Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani Arrested on Fabricated Terror Charges

Carnival of Personal Finance



Carnival of Debt Reduction



Carnival of Capitalists

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I apologize if anybody tried calling my office today. I fell and hurt my leg, then by the time I got done with a client, they had the road blocked due to construction. I tried asking a cop how to get there, and he basically said, "You can't." It doesn't look like anyone else managed to successfully run the gauntlet either. Here's hoping it's easier tomorrow.